The black dot

The first time I was eligible to vote, in 1977 in Bombay, my registration
was cancelled and I couldn't exercise my democratic right. That
was the historic election in which Indira Gandhi lost, but of
course at the time that the country went to the polls, no one
knew she was going to lose. I remember how peeved I felt that
I wasn't going to be able to do even the little that I could,
as a citizen, to ensure that her chaotic misguided rule came to
an end.

The only thing left to me to vent my ire in the readers response
column of The Indian Express. My letter was published on
the morning of the election and several people told me that they
had read it on their way to their polling booths and that it had
strengthened their hands as they cast their votes. It seemed to
have been an effort well-spent.

Twenty-one years later, when I finally got around to earning the
black spot on my left index finger, conditions had changed so
much in the country that I could barely recall the optimism with
which I wrote that distant letter. I would be nervous now, in
today's reality, to stick my neck out even to that modest extent.
There does not seem to be anything historic or memorable about
the electoral process going on around us and, yet, it is quite
possibly going to be the axis around which the wheel of our many
destinies will turn. Cinema has taught us to associate dramatic
action with stirring music. But, in real life, the most extreme
events take place with no accompanying soundtrack.

The morning dawned soft and grey, waxing into warm sunlight by
11 o'clock. I set off for the polling station at which I am registered,
with a friend and her two beautiful daughters. A primary school
in our area had been requisitioned for the poll and, when we got
there, a mild hum of activity was in evidence. A few security
personnel, a handful of tables with party workers, citizens dressed
up for the occasion and that was about it. Inside, there was a
short queue. It seemed that we would be deprived of even the basic
inconvenience of a long wait! It took us all of five minutes to
enter the little room where polling officers were sitting around
with their lists and registers.

Since this, despite my advanced age, was my first experience of
voting, I was trying hard to feel solemn and portentous, but the
mildly festive atmosphere made this impossible. My friend's two
daughters were looking forward to their first experience as voters
but one was disappointed. She had not yet been registered on the
lists!

The remaining three of us had our voter's ID cards and our names
had been printed up. One of the men sitting behind the tables
looked like an elderly dandy in a Wild West film, wearing a fawn
three piece suit and rhinestone jewellery, complete with glittering
bolero tie-clip. His function was to hand out the actual stamping
device used for marking the ballot sheet, after having carefully
inked it on both sides. I was delighted by his appearance and
wished privately that all polling officers be made to dress in
uniforms appropriate to their duty.

A young man carrying a video camera on his shoulder ambled in
sporting the studiedly bored expression typical of his breed.
Why do we rarely see any video cameramen who actually enjoy their
jobs? This one trained his lens in our direction, filling up his
quota of footage showing "leddies" exercising their
democratic rights. Too bad none of us were in a burkha,
or else he could have gone home satisfied that he'd done his tour
to duty. No election day media coverage is complete, after all,
without the mandatory shot of Muslim and/or tribal women queuing
up at the booths.

Our responsibilities discharged, we returned to my friend's home
for the real business of the day, a cup of coffee and a long lazy
chat. Meanwhile, elsewhere in the city, an Algerian diplomat's
wife was busy savaging Sagarika Ghose over a parking dispute.
The papers have since reported the incident from both sides. Astonishingly,
the amazon appears to think that she had enough provocation to
assault Ghose, as if violence in public places in the obvious
and natural solution to life's little problems.

Clearly, she hasn't spent very long in India! Our solution to
problems is to hold elections. Of course they're not very effective.
But then, neither is violence; the news reports don't mention
who actually won the coveted parking place at the end of hostilities,
but it sounds like no one did.